Contact Information

Biography

Dr. St. Hilaire's main area of expertise is British Renaissance poetry. She is particularly interested in the works of John Milton, and even more specifically in Paradise Lost. Most of her current work focuses on how 17th century religious poetry works to redeem fallen individuality. Her most recent project, Satan's Poetry: Fallenness and Poetic Tradition in Paradise Lost, pursues this question by examining how Paradise Lost situates itself as a participant in the fallen world in order to develop an understanding of community--both of people and of poems--that rescues the worth of the individuals within it.

Dr. St. Hilaire additionally has interests in epic poetry, Shakespeare, and literary tradition, and is developing a new curiosity in ethics and early modern subjectivity.

In addition to her scholarly pursuits, Dr. St. Hilaire is also embarrassingly obsessed with hockey, and is sure that she could be world-famous if she could just find the time to write a book on the phenomenology of the face-off. (Go Pens!)

Education

  • Ph.D., English Literature, Cornell University, 2006
  • M.A., English Literature, Cornell University, 2004
  • B.A., English Literature and Latin Literature, Brandeis University, 2001

 

School

  • Satan's Poetry: Fallenness and Poetic Tradition in Paradise Lost (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2012).
  • "Allusion and Sacrifice in Titus Andronicus," Studies in English Literature 49.2 (Spring 2009):  311-331.
  • "The Satanic Question and the Poetics of Creation," in John Milton:  "Reasoning Words." Ed. Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham (Selinsgrove, PA:  Susquehanna University Press, 2008), 88-114.
  • "Reason, Love, and Regeneration in Paradise Lost, Book 10," ‘With Wandering Steps': Generative Irresolution in Milton, eds. Mimi Fenton and Louis Schwartz (Pittsburgh: Â鶹ֱ²¥ Press, 2016), 191-234.
  • "Pity and the Failures of Justice in Shakespeare's King Lear," Modern Philology 113.2 (2016): 482-506.